and i think the reason obama has never been able to pull away, even when romney had two pretty bad weeks, is that in the end there's this rubber band effect that they go, well, i'd almost like to give him another shot, but this is really frightening and really painful. >> well, nobody is ever going to pull away in this political system. so that's never going to happen. we always -- >> no, i disagree. i think he could have. if there was a moment to pull away, and the only thing that snaps it back is this feeling of things aren't -- >> the race was always going to be close. i don't think anybody would deny that. but let's be clear. let's look at where we've come. 800,000 jobs were being lost the first time the president read the unemployment report. i know these are just statistics for people in washington. that's real lives in america. 31 consecutive months of positive job growth. are we growing as fast as we'd like to? no. but it takes a long time to dig out of this avalanche of tremendously bad decisions that preceded the obama presidency. and let's understand this. one thing they saw i